How To Disable Touchpad While Writing Article Or Documentation In Ubuntu/Linux Mint Or Derivatives Linux

I am a blogger so most of my time goes in writing articles and tutorials. One problem that I have been facing while typing is that my palm comes in contact with the touchpad and the cursor moves somewhere else on the screen or editor and my article is all messed up. I even have to rethink and rewrite sometime when many lines have got deleted due to this problem. But finally I have found the solution to this problem. Here is how you can fix this.

I am sure if you type a lot then you  face this problem too. You can't change the way you type because it is definitely going to slow down your typing speed. But don't worry you can type on the go without changing your typing behavior. You can use an small and easy to use program to disable the touchpad while you're using your keyboard.

How To Disable Touchpad While Using Keyboard?

You can install an small app called Touchpad-Indicator to disable your touchpad while using keyboard. It's an easy to configure app which is completely free and available for Ubuntu or Linux Mint.

Lorenzo Carbonell, the developer of the program has provided the app through a PPA. Here is how you can install this app using your terminal application.

Open Terminal (CTRL + ALT + T) and add the PPA -

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao

Update the local repository cache and install the app -

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install touchpad-indicator

How To Use Touchpad-Indicator?

After you have installed Touchpad-Indicator, run it from Ubuntu dash or application menu. Currently I am using Peppermint OS so I need to open menu to run the app.

Touchpad-Indicator starts in the system tray. So right click the icon and from here you can disable touchpad, hide touchpad-indicator icon, open settings, help and you can exit the app. 

Open settings from system tray. Here you can configure Touchpad-Indicator according to your needs.
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• Enable and set shortcut for the app.

• From the Actions tab you can set touchpad to disable when any mouse is plugged in. You can also set enable touchpad on exit, disable touchpad on exit, disable touchpad when Touchpad-Indicator starts and disable touchpad on typing.

Disable touchpad on typing is the main option of this app. This option disables the touchpad when you're typing and enables it back when you have done typing. You can also set time when to re-enable the touchpad after done typing. I prefer to the time 1000 milliseconds. 

• Under General options you have Autostart the app when the laptop starts. You can also set the app start hidden i.e. no app icon at all in the system tray. The last option is show notifications, it shows all the notifications whenever the changes are made in the touchpad.

• The touchpad configuration lets you set some basic features of touchpad, such as Vertical scrolling, Horizontal scrolling, Circular scrolling, Two fingers vertical scrolling, two fingers horizontal scrolling and natural scrolling.

Finally the theme tab allows you to change the icon theme displayed in the system tray.

Now you're all done setting up your touchpad for typing. Now there won't be any mess when you're typing. You must be using this app if you're typing throughout the day. It really saves your precious time! Enjoy!